Recovering the cultural heritage of Wilhelm Reich's origin involves a large variety of connected projects.
How much of Reich has remained in Yuzhynets?
What has remained of the Reich's 8 square kilometer estate? According to local residents this was the well of the Reich family in Yuzhynets?
In Yuzhynets the Reich-Blum family was once one of the largest landowners. Joseph Blum, the brother of Wilhelm Reich's grandmother, owned an impressive 8 square kilometer estate. After the death of his parents Cecilia and Leon, Wilhelm Reich took care of this land until he was called to join the Austrian army in 1914. Using old cadastral plans we are trying to reconstruct the dimensions of the Reich farm house. Some residents of Yuzhynets still remember the Jewish successors, who bought the Reich farm in 1929, when owner Joseph Blum bankrupted.
Wilhelm Reich's biography and the colonisation of galicia
Maps of the German Colony in Dobrianychi (Galicia) which was founded in 1786.
In 1782 Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II initated one of the largest colonisation projects of modern times. He summoned German speaking settlers from the Habsburg lands to build up the agriculure in Galicia. Dobrianychi was one of many Ukrainian rural villages that received the foreign settlers. Wilhelm Reich's father Leon had a farm in Dobrianychi, before he moved with his family to a larger estate in the Yuzhynets, Bukovina.
Rebuilding Wilhelm Reich's Birth House in Dobrianychi
Floor plan and vertical section of a standard colony house in Galicia, 1784
When Wilhelm Reich was born in 1897, his family presumably lived in a standard colony house. The Austrian State Archive in Vienna has the plans of the farm houses that were built in thousands for the German-speaking colonists in Galicia.
"The Passion of Youth" - Creating a theatre Play on Wilhelm Reich's Life in Galicia & bukovina
Theatre Les Kurbas, Lviv
Together with the Ukrainian actor Oleh Oneshchak a semi-documentary theater play will be written and performed, based on Wilhelm Reich's autobiography "The passion of youth".
The places of Wilhelm Reich & his family
This goal of this sub project is to track down the places, where Wilhelm Reich and members of his family lived during the 19th and 20th century in Europe. The map is constantly updated. Please contact us if you have a place to add.